Special Report
At the Heart of the Church
6:12 AM I’ve been awake for a little more than a half hour, and I am now at the mercy of an elevator—a somewhat comical temporal detail of a life lived in the […]
Features
News
The Changing Face of Ireland
Recent census data, which indicates that some 10 percent of the inhabitants of the Irish Republic were born overseas, brings the changing face of Irish society into sharp focus. After decades of mass emigration following […]
Special Report
Ora et Labora
In his famous Rule, St. Benedict (480-547) lays out a way of life that includes the celebration of the Divine Office, prayerful reading, silence, manual labor, hospitality, and obedience to an abbot—all within the context […]
Special Report
Pharmacists with Targets on their Backs
There is a gathering storm in the United States, threatening the right of conscience protected under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Although many other groups’ conscience rights have […]
Analysis
A Shrewd Move
Last April the director of the Vatican press office, Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, confirmed reports that Pope Benedict XVI would travel to the US in 2008. Immediately the rumor mills began to churn. The Holy […]
Essay
Please Look Behind the Bishops’ Potemkin Village
Dear Friends: You have my sympathy. When I worked for the American bishops’ conference, I helped organize two of John Paul II’s US trips, and I know what you’re up against—millions of details, thousands of […]
Editorial
Preach the Gospel to Every Creature
The Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), a group said to represent 400,000 people, sent a letter to the Vatican last November requesting “full, corporate, and sacramental union” with the Church, according to The Catholic Herald in […]
Essay
“When Do I Get My Center for Babies?”
The controversy about Mother Teresa’s spiritual struggles has inspired the worst in the late nun’s fiercest critics. Angry atheists who once described the saintly figure as everything from a “phony” to the “moonbat of Calcutta” […]
Essay
The Closing of the Catholic Mind
It is necessary not to abandon the passion for ultimate truth or the eagerness to search for it or the audacity to forge new paths in the search. It is faith that stirs reason to […]
Special Report
Rebuilding the Bridge Between East and West
From Stalin’s persecution of “enemies of the state” after the defeat of Nazi Germany until Gorbachev’s last-minute reforms on behalf of a dying Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the Catholic Church’s largest Eastern Rite […]